Explanations
by July Storms
Summary: When Levi and Hange find themselves expecting a second child, their six-year-old decides that she needs to know the answer to a very important question: "Where do babies come from?" (Levihan.)


**Explanations**

**Prompt**: "Levi and Hange's six-year-old asks where babies come from when Hange is seven months pregnant. Levi has to answer, because Hange's too busy laughing at his red face." (Requested by Anonymous.)

**Notes**: Very slightly canon-divergent. Felicity's name was borrowed from "Dreams May Not Come True." ;)

* * *

"Hey."

Hange shot up, paper stuck to her face as her heart pounded in her chest: "I'm up! I was just resting my eyes."

"Tch." She was still blinking sleepily when Levi peeled the sheet of paper from her cheek. "Where's Felicity?"

She had to think for a moment. "Reading in her room. I think."

"She's only six. You didn't lock the door."

"I only closed my eyes for a moment." She shifted in the hardback chair and winced before stretching her arms over her head.

"If you need help—"

"Really, Levi. I'm fine!" With one hand on the table, she managed to haul herself to her feet. "And Felicity's fine. Why don't you check on her while I finish dinner?"

His response was a grunt of acknowledgment but he headed for the stairs, and Hange put a hand to her back and moved over to the stove.

It wasn't exactly a lie: she was all right. She was just so damn _tired_ all of the time. Felicity had been an easy pregnancy; the morning sickness was minimal, she hardly ever craved anything that they didn't have on-hand, and her feet hardly ever hurt at all. The birth had been the difficult part: more than thirty-four hours from start to finish.

Less than four weeks after Felicity's birth, Hange was called into combat. She left Felicity with Mike's parents, said, "It'll just be a couple of weeks, three at the most."

But it was much longer.

A younger recruit's wires had gotten tangled with hers, somehow, and they'd both nearly died. The boy lost a leg and was moved into paperwork shuffling; Hange found herself on bed rest for weeks and weeks and _weeks_.

Levi fretted over her in his usual way, with careful sarcasm and the occasional gentle touch. Eventually she'd recovered, and they'd been able to take custody of Felicity again, but years passed after that before she got pregnant a second time.

The doctors, with their limited knowledge, had thought perhaps Hange had been injured too badly and had ruined her chances to have more children. But then, just before Felicity turned six, Hange found herself pregnant with baby number two.

And the second pregnancy had been difficult right from the get-go. Morning sickness started when she was less than a month along, and it didn't fade until the sixth month. Her feet always hurt, and her back ached, and she was just _so tired_.

After a horribly embarrassing incident during drills, when she had fainted dead away of exhaustion, one of the medical teams had insisted on Hange staying at home. So she and Felicity stayed at home every day, and Hange did what work she could do from the kitchen table.

She didn't much care for staying at home; titans were still a very real threat and the idea of them out there bothered her more than it did in her youth. When she wasn't worrying about them getting inside of the walls to hurt her daughter, she worried about Levi. He was the best there was, but Hange wasn't a fool; she knew that even the best fighters out there could make mistakes, and gear could malfunction.

He said it wasn't like her to worry so much, but every time he had to leave on a mission, she spent the night beforehand awake and fretting; helplessness was the worst feeling in the world.

Hange stoked the fire in the stove and covered a yawn with her free hand.

Levi eventually made his way back into the kitchen. "She's just like you," he said. "Reading and talking to herself."

"I've taught her well." She flashed him a smile over her shoulder as she worked on dinner; it was prepared except for the cooking part.

He gave her something that might have passed for a pleasant expression, and came to stand behind her, his hands resting on her hips, his thumbs rubbing little circles into her lower back. "A bath after dinner?" he suggested.

She gave an appreciative hum at the thought of a hot bath.

Dinner was a quiet affair. Felicity had a book in her lap and Hange was too tired to hold up her end of the conversation. Levi didn't push things, but he had that dumb look on his face that said he was worried. Of course he was—it was terrible enough that he saw people die every time he left the safety of the walls. Titans were, if nothing else, at least predictable in that way: they would kill human beings. Levi could fight them; people had long ago lost track of his solo kill count.

But he couldn't fight her sore feet or her exhaustion for her, and that bothered him. He didn't like to feel that things in his life were out of his control.

Hange flashed him a tired smile and he looked away, a muscle in his jaw shifting.

She sighed and pushed her food around on her plate until Levi stood up.

"Not hungry?" he asked.

"Just tired."

"Mum fell asleep twice today." Felicity didn't even look up from her book.

Levi made an annoyed sound in the back of his throat and pulled on Hange's ponytail when he walked by to wash one of the countertops off.

"I'll feel better tomorrow," she insisted, and got up from her chair. "I'll go to bed early."

Levi threw her a skeptical look and she scowled at him.

"I mean it. I'll put my notes away and won't look at them until tomorrow. But first, dishes."

"Nope, you can't!" Felicity slammed her book closed and slid off of her chair, the same determined look on her face that Levi often wore (though he denied it). "_I'll_ help Daddy with the dishes." She scooted up behind Hange and pushed on the backs of her thighs, grunting as if she thought she had the strength to move her. "Go rest."

"All right," Hange said, letting her daughter move her toward the living room, though she threw a look over her shoulder at Levi's dumb smirking face to say she knew he was behind it all; Felicity hardly ever put her books down for anything, after all. He'd probably offered her a deal—like a new book if she offered to help with the dishes.

Their couch was old and worn, and it was perfect. Hange settled onto it and leaned her head back with a sigh. The next thing she knew, a weight landed next to her and something warm settled over her belly.

When she peeled her eyes open to see what it was, Felicity's brown eyes blinked up at her from where she lay half across Hange's lap, arms wrapped around her mother's belly, chin on top.

"Are you awake?" she whispered.

"Mmhm."

It wasn't very convincing. Felicity gave an exaggerated sigh.

"Daddy? I have a question."

Hange could feel Levi's weight settling in on her other side, could hear him shift his arms as he crossed them over his chest in a show of indifference. His fingers brushed against the sleeve of her shirt once. "Ask your mother," he said.

"She's not paying attention and I wanna know _now_."

Levi flicked Hange's arm; she supposed he was telling her that Felicity was acting like her: too impatient, too energetic.

It was rather endearing, really.

"All right," he finally consented when Hange didn't respond to him and instead let her eyes flutter closed again.

Felicity shifted, probably to turn her eyes up at her father. "Where do babies come from?"

Hange had no intention of laughing; she felt her lips turn up in a smile—what a question!—but it was Levi who made it happen. She could feel him stiffen next to her on the couch, and she opened her eyes to see that his face was turning red.

"What?" he asked.

"I _said_, where do babies come from? I mean, obviously they come from _somewhere_ because Mum says that this huge lump in her tummy is a baby, but—"

Whatever sound it was that Levi made afterward—some kind of strangled confused why-me noise—was what did it. The next thing she knew, her own face was red from holding in her laughter, and she started to snort when she tried to breathe in.

"Why are you laughing? What's funny? _Daddy?_" Felicity's voice was jittery due to being half-wrapped around her mother's belly as she laughed.

"Hange, stop doing that," Levi tried to say, but his attempt at distraction just made her laugh harder.

She finally buried her face against his shoulder to muffle the sound, but managed to choke out, "Just tell her, Levi," before she dissolved into hiccups.

Hiccups always made everything worse.

"I just want to know about babies!" Felicity's voice was high and indignant.

Levi's fingers closed around Hange's side as he pinched her—hard. Retribution, she suspected, for making him answer the question. His hand landed on her belly, just in front of Felicity's chin. "There's a baby in here."

"I saw a baby the other day," she said. "How did it get in there? How will it get _out_?"

"It starts out small."

"How small?"

"So small you can't see it."

"But how does it get there in the first place?"

Levi cleared his throat as Hange's laughter subsided. He was doing surprisingly well.

"When parents decide that they want to have a baby they do something to get it put there."

Felicity was silent for a long moment, and then she asked, suspiciously, "Well, what took so long?"

Hange bit her lip hard and was glad that she wasn't answering the question. _We tried for years but nothing happened_.

"Because your mum needs help with a baby. You can do that, can't you? Help her out?"

"Well _duh_."

Hange peeked out from where she'd shoved her head against her husband's shoulder and saw him ruffling their daughter's hair.

"We had to wait until you were old enough to help out, then," he said.

"Okay but what do you do to get the baby inside?"

"We'll tell you that when you're older," Hange interjected.

"But—"

"When you're older," Levi repeated.

Felicity sighed. "Okay, but how do you get it _out_?"

"In a couple of months, you'll know the answer to that."

"Why can't you tell me _now_?"

"Because it'll ruin the surprise. Now go get your pajamas; it's bath night."

* * *

After Felicity had a bath, Levi sat with her on her bed and combed out her hair. Hange told her a short bedtime story, and as always, it starred Felicity's favorite person: Petra Ral, a member of Levi's old squad. It hadn't been her intent to turn former peers into bedtime story heroes, but she had never been good at making up stories; it was easier to talk about things she already knew and understood.

Besides, Petra made a good hero.

Felicity fell asleep before Hange could even get to the part where Auruo bit his tongue.

Levi pulled Hange down the stairs and into the bathroom where the tub was still full of water from Felicity's bath. He dipped a hand in the water and made a face. "How tired are you?"

"Pretty tired. Is it cold?"

"Warm, but it could be warmer."

She considered waiting for Levi to boil more water, and shook her head, tugging her shirt off. "If it's hot I'll just fall asleep in it anyway."

She got into the bath and cringed at the amount of displaced water from her weight, but Levi didn't seem to notice. He grabbed a clean cloth and the soap and got to work taking care of her even though he'd been in meetings with Erwin most of the day and probably wanted a bath of his own.

"Are you really going to let her see the birth?" he asked, rinsing her hair out.

"If she really wants to, I don't think it'd be so bad. Do you think she's too young?"

"I don't know shit," he said. "You know what."

Of course. Levi had spent much of his childhood seeing things kids should never be allowed to see, things adults didn't even want to witness.

"I'll explain the process to her; if I don't act like it's a terrible, horrible thing, I don't think it would scare her too much. Right?"

He answered with a quiet sound; Hange was confident that Felicity would be fine; she had enough of both of her parents in her that she would probably view birth as something natural and interesting; the blood and sweat would be gross, but nothing frightening. After all, Levi had come home a few times with blood on his clothes, and all Felicity had wanted to know was if he had been hurt.

"Hey, Levi?"

"What." He pulled the cloth over her swollen breasts and she hissed a little under her breath. "I'm being careful; you can't just not clean yourself because it hurts."

She supposed she could think of it as a battle wound of sorts. "You did a good job answering Felicity's question."

"You were absolutely no fucking help."

She grinned. "You still did well."

"I should have pretended that I didn't know the answer. Then you would have had to answer."

"But your answer was so much better than what mine would have been."

"It was shorter, anyway."

He continued in silence, and when Hange felt she could be no cleaner, he helped her to her feet and tossed a towel at her head.

"I'm kind of hungry," she admitted as she flipped her hair in front of her to dry it as best as she could; it had grown a bit, and she hadn't bothered to cut it.

"I can heat up dinner I guess."

"I'll eat it cold."

"Get dressed and get back to the room and I'll bring it."

"Okay," she agreed, and almost jumped out of her skin when Levi brushed past her and pinched her butt. "It's not nice to tease the _very pregnant_ woman, Levi!"

He ignored her, but when he rounded the corner, Hange could see the smirk on his face.

She waited in their room and combed her hair; Levi took way too long and Hange realized that he was actually heating up the food. Why else would it take him so long? She was half-asleep by the time he came into the room, but she sat up and took the fork he offered her. "I could have eaten it cold," she insisted.

"Are you complaining?"

"No." She smiled around a forkful of potatoes at him, and while she ate, he got ready for bed. By the time he joined her under the blankets, she was done, her plate on the bedside table. "Hey," she said as he blew out the candle.

"Hm?"

"I won't fall asleep tomorrow, all right?" Just in case he was worried about it. Felicity was smart, but she was still a kid, and bad things could happen to children when their parents weren't paying attention. Kids and trouble attracted one another; Hange knew that from her own childhood experiences.

"It's fine," he said. "I promised her a bunch of books if she stayed inside and kept you out of trouble."

"Bribery," she said, not surprised at all. "Well, if it works…"

"It'll work. She'll never leave the house. She likes reading too much."

"Well, thanks," she told him, "but I can take care of myself."

He pulled the blankets up and over his bare shoulder as he turned to face her. "Says the woman who was sleeping with a piece of paper stuck to her face this afternoon."

"I'll be back to normal soon. And then you will be sorry for all of this teasing."

He kissed her, too long and too slow and she sighed when he pulled away, almost in disappointment. "You'd just end up fucking pregnant again," he said, and let his hand rest on her belly. "This one is energetic. You'll never have a moment's peace."

"Neither will you."

"I didn't complain when Felicity woke up every other minute all night, did I?"

Hange grinned. "No, you didn't. You got out of bed and brought her to me and fell asleep as soon as your face hit the pillow. It was very cute."

"Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"Yeah," she said, and put her hand over his. She meant to say, "Good night," but she was asleep before she could open her mouth to speak the words.


End file.
